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About the Author

Gail Kinn has conceived and edited a wide range of film books, including Screwball: The Great Romantic Comedies, Hollywood at Home: The Photographs of Sid Avery, and The Scorsese Picture. She lives in New York City.

Jim Piazza is an essayist, screenwriter, and playwright whose personal essays and writings about the media have appeared in The Village Voice and Out magazine. He has been a script analyst for Columbia, Fox, and Paramount Pictures. With Gail Kinn, he is the coauthor of The Greatest Movies Ever (BD&L). He lives in New York City.

Top customer reviews

Making pronouncements on the ‘greatest’ movies is a dicey enterprise at best. Thus I echo the other comments here, both positive and not-so-positive. A description of Four-Star Movies might be: an above-average coffee table book, in its way immensely entertaining, and with its share of commendable points.The pluses include a detailed index, informative commentary & sidebars, and lots and lots of photos. But my main criticism is that the films selected are heavily weighted to the conventional Hollywood product, mostly post-1950, and sorely lacking in foreign and Golden Age films. Instead, the inclusions are, to say the least, highly subjective. To wit: Airplane? Diner?It’s a throwaway line but I’ll observe that the films left out could comprise a volume – or volumes – in themselves: Brief Encounter, Metropolis, Sunrise, Trouble in Paradise, Giant, Touch of Evil, Lost Horizon, Ben-Hur, Grand Hotel, West Side Story, to cite but a few that didn’t make the cut. To be fair, the authors do include a goodly amount of indisputable classics: Double Indemnity, The Third Man, The Grapes of Wrath, Rashomon, Seven Samurai, 8½, Vertigo, Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia. No arguments with these.But overall I go with the plurality opinion and rate this one a respectable three stars, just short of four.

Who are these two authors, and why do they think that they are qualified to write this book? It's horrible. "A Hard Day's Night" with the Beattles is listed, and not "Shane" or "Twelve Angry Men"? "The Best Years of Our Lives" way down at #36. "Groundhog Day" is cute, but in top 100? "The Searchers" doesn't compare to "Shane", or "Stagecoach" (1939) or "High Noon". Plus, as others pointed out, they have facts from several movies all wrong. And, as also pointed out, their "The Great Scene" sections make it seem like they never watched the movie that they're talking about. In "Casablanca", one of the greatest and most moving scenes in all movies, the scene where Paul Henreid leads the band in the Marseillaise to drown out the Nazi's militant music, isn't mentioned. Their choice of the Great Scene in "The Best Years of Our Lives", one of my favorite movies, I have to agree, is very moving, but I feel the scene where Homer waves goodbye to his new-found friends in the taxi, showing his loved-ones for the first time the prosthetics that have replaced his hands, is even more moving.

All-in-all, as seems supported by other reviews here and at other sites, these authors missed the boat on at least half of their choices. But, it is their opinion... I just don't think it worth publishing.

While I was browsing in our local bookstore, I was pleasantly surprised to find this book. For some reason I am fascinated by lists of the greatest movies whether the list made by American Film Institute, Roger Ebert or the different publications and magazines who made their own "definitive" lists.

The packaging as well as the design and format of the book were impressive. It was simple but organized and nicely printed. Too bad just like some of the reviewers already pointed out, there were quite a number of misinformation and typographical error in the book. I find it really unacceptable for a book to have misspelled words, how about a little proofreading next time? And there were also quite a number of wrong information that ranges from the description of a particular scene, wrong entries regarding Academy Award nominations, as well as the section the book had on the different rankings of other "greatest movie lists". That was a major turnoff!

Regarding the list, they made some interesting choices. Some of the usual suspects like The Silence of the Lambs, High Noon, To Kill a Mockingbird, West Side Story, The Philadelphia Story, Rebel Without a Cause, and Mister Smith Goes to Washington were left out. There were some pleasant not so obvious entries like Thelma and Louise, American Beauty, LA Confidential, and Strangers on a Train. But they also had some unconventional entries that I don't necessarily agree with like Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Saving Private Ryan, Airplane, and Spartacus to name a few. If they were going for some unconventional choices, I hope they had included Twelve Angry Men, The Age of Innocence, Seven, The Color Purple, Mister Roberts etc.

Even though I made some rants regarding the accuracy of the information, I still think this is a great read. Just don't use it as a resource book.